Comment by typpilol
3 months ago
They've been saying this for years now.
The problem is there's no real alternative.
Your grandma is not going to use Linux. So the choice is between windows and mac.. and the truth is a lot of apps people use are windows only.
I don't see windows losing desktop share anytime soon.
The average grandparent isn't installing an OS, they're using whatever comes on the device. If you had Ubuntu pre-installed and automatically updating, there isn't going to be that much of a difference for how many less-tech-savy people use the computer.
Microsoft has a strong cycle of "applications run on Windows" -> "device vendors choose to bundle Windows" -> "people use applications on Windows", but that has been eroded, in part thanks to Wine and the work put in by people at Valve.
If someone who uses their computer to browse the web and check the email picked up a laptop pre-installed with Ubuntu, they'd likely be perfectly fine with it.
>a strong cycle of "applications run on Windows" -> "device vendors choose to bundle Windows" -> "people use applications on Windows",
>but that has been eroded, in part thanks to Wine and the work put in by people at Valve.
Eroded even more so by the user-hostile approach of Microsoft itself.
Exactly with things like being a complete failure to recognize a strong valid need for general users to only opt-in to an account according to their own personal needs alone. Not with Microsoft or Google or anybody else known to be a source of unwanted ads or anti-professional annoyances.
Why abandon a remaining security element that can protect against PII compromise like no other?
It's just sad to lose an essential feature that has always been built-in to Windows since the beginning, which helped make Windows into a far better business machine than would have been otherwise possible.
And why now when security is more important than ever?
I don’t know…for people who can do their computing on a Chromebook, a Linux distribution would be suitable.
The people who will have the hardest time switching to Linux are those who need proprietary software products that are unavailable for Linux and whose needs are not met by open-source alternatives. Microsoft Office is still the standard for office software, and the Adobe Creative Cloud is still the standard for many creatives.
If LibreOffice ever reached 100% compatibility and feature parity with Microsoft Office, and if the Adobe Creative Cloud ever got ported to Linux, then this could spell trouble for Windows.
> for people who can do their computing on a Chromebook, a Linux distribution would be suitable
That sounds reasonable, given that
> ChromeOS is built on top of the Linux kernel. Originally based on Ubuntu, its base was changed to Gentoo Linux in February 2010 (--https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChromeOS)
Have you tried it? I see where you're coming from but don't think it would work out that 'no grandma can use it'
My plan for years has been to install Linux Mint + Cinnamon for my grandma when she next needs a new laptop... but she still hasn't needed one :(. And she's slowly getting too old for any new computer
Every Windows upgrade was a big change again. The UI would change each time, Windows Live Mail got discontinued, Office got ribbons, etc. Why reinvent the wheel each time? I've replaced:
- Windows Live Mail with Thunderbird, that has been stable.
- Microsoft Office with Libreoffice, that has been stable.
- The next item on the list was going to be Windows itself, since Cinnamon hasn't significantly changed since I started using Linux over ten years ago. It still has a start menu, system tray, window list at the bottom (without the windows collapsing and hiding!), everything made for usability and working as you expect.
The only exception is (grand)parents that need custom software. E.g. my mom has custom software (from Hema I think? Or Bruna maybe?) for editing photo albums to then send it to a print shop and get a real photo album. That will be web based nowadays I imagine. I should ask her but that could still be a barrier to switching
Edit: Similar issue on Android btw. There isn't one function that my (grand)parents use, that Android 16 has that Android 4 did not. The only thing that keeps changing under them is UI. Sure, developer APIs got nicer, support for dual-frequency GNSS is there, screens got taller... none of that needed to touch the UI. Sadly Google does a phenomenal job of obsoleting old OS versions quickly so you need to keep buying new. EU law for longer device support doesn't even help because you still need to upgrade that OS and can't simply use an LTS with security updates
The last Windows versions my parents actually used was Windows XP, maybe they encountered Vista somewhere for a brief moment. In my capacity as the family sysadmin, I've switched them to Linux around this time. Ubuntu first, now Debian. XFCE back in the day, Gnome3 since a few years. I think they'd hardly recognize a modern windows installation any more. Gnome3 has it's warts, but I really hope it's here to stay, at least in the broad strokes of the UI paradigm.
I'll have you know my grandma was using Linux just fine... was certainly a lot easier than windows changing random UI elements every time.
Hey, but Linux is just ideal for grandma! Its only competitor is Chrome OS. Well, and iPad OS for obvious reasons.